Meera says she was subjected to 'mental torture' in the US

Meera has cleared the air about the news of her being admitted to an American asylum due to some mental illness. The news took the internet by storm last week and ever since several different versions of the story and explanations have been presented, with little confirmation of what's true and what's not.

Meera, who's currently in the US on a personal tour, spoke to BBC Urdu and finally told her story.

When asked about the incident, the Baaji actor was audibly angry, and said, "There's a lobby that's working against me, they keep slandering my character to bring shame to my stardom."

When asked about what happened in her visit to the New York Brooklyn Hospital, she said she had gone to get vaccinated. She also promptly sent a video of herself getting vaccinated. The interviewer reported feeling that Meera had taken time to put a story together, and now was her time to get it across. However, when asked directly whether she was taken to a psychiatric hospital and was being deported from the United States, Meera said, 'It's really late here in America right now, and everyone in my house is sleeping. I can't talk in detail right now."

The conversation didn't end there, and as she got more comfortable talking over Whatsapp, she claimed that she's being "subjected to mental torture in US".

"I've been struggling with depression, and that's why I went to the hospital. However once there, they mistook me for being crazy. They even confiscated my phone," she alleged. "There's a difference between being depressed and mentally unstable, which is important to understand, but they refused to recognise the difference here and admitted me.

"I was screaming the entire night, calling for help, and no one came. It was a really scary night for me," she said.

"The next day, my mom made an appeal to Prime Minister Imran Khan and Interior Minister Sheikh Rasheed for my discharge," Meera explained. Continuing, she said it was Rasheed's phone call that made her eventual discharge possible, who called on the Pakistani Embassy in the US to help her.

"I was released on a request submitted by the Pakistani Embassy," she said.

She also rejected reports of being deported from the US and said she's travelling to Dubai of her own accord and will be shooting for a Pakistani TV show there.

BBC Urdu also reached out to Meera's mother, Shafqat Zahra Bukhari, in Lahore, and reported what she had to say. "Three days ago, my daughter Meera called me and told me that she was in an American hospital, getting a COVID-19 vaccine. But then, suddenly, the call dropped," she narrated.

"I tried to get back in touch with her but failed. Then, I was contacted by a journalist in America, who told me that my daughter had been admitted into a mental asylum. She demanded protocol there, saying every government in Pakistan has treated me like a VIP," she said.

"Because I couldn't get in touch with Meera, I contacted the prime minister and the interior minister."

Meera's father also weighed in, saying his daughter had been mistreated in Pakistan by her fellows in the entertainment industry. He alleged that Meera had entered into a contract with a TV channel for their Ramazan transmission in Karachi, but another actress conspired against her and she lost the contract. He also said that the success of his daughter's movie Baaji benefitted the makers, who kept the proceeds for themselves.

"Meera was already depressed when she went to the USA, stopping in Dubai on her way, and then the incident happened," he said.